Researchers from the National Center for Marriage Research combed through recent census figures to look at relationships between divorce and factors like education and ethnicity. The data linking divorce and education level revealed that there may be a link between the two.

A commonly held belief is that those with more education are less likely to divorce, but that is not always the case. In fact, those with a college bachelor’s degree and those without a high school diploma were just about even in terms of divorce rates. The group that had a higher divorce rate (just shy of twice the rate of the others) was women who had some post-high school education, but who never finished their bachelor’s degree. Researchers were not why sure this group experienced a jump in the divorce rate.

Researchers also looked at the relationships between divorce and various races. The census data showed the following divorce rates: Asian woman had the lowest rate at 10 divorces for every 1,000 women; white and Hispanic women were next with 16.3 and 18.1; and African-American women experienced the highest divorce rates at 30.4 per 1,000 women.

These numbers reflect averages across the nation, so there is bound to be some variation as you travel from region to region. Does your experience or that of your friends back up or contradict the data from the census bureau? What do you think are the underlying reasons?